Abstract
This study explored the neurophysiological correlates of executive function (EF) in young children from two different cultural backgrounds. Twenty European-Canadian and 17 Chinese-Canadian 5-year-olds participated in a go/no-go task, during which high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. No cultural group differences were observed in children's behavioral performance on the task, but marked differences were revealed by ERP analyses, which focused on the amplitude and latency of the N2 waveform. Chinese-Canadian children showed larger (i.e., more negative) N2 amplitudes than European-Canadian children on the right side of the scalp on no-go trials, as well as on the left side of the scalp on go trials, and for all children, larger N2 amplitudes were associated with faster median reaction times. Source analyses of the N2 were consistent with the hypothesis that compared to European-Canadian children, Chinese-Canadian children showed more activation in dorsomedial, ventromedial, and (bilateral) ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings reveal that EEG can provide a measure of cultural differences in neurocognitive function that is more sensitive than behavioral data alone; that Chinese-Canadian children show a pattern of hemispheric differentiation in the context of this task than that is more pronounced than that of age-matched European-Canadian children; that the asymmetrically lateralized N2 may be a reliable marker of both effortful inhibition (on the right) and effortful approach (on the left); and that the neural correlates of EF may vary across samples of healthy participants, even in children.
Highlights
Executive function (EF) – the conscious control of thought and action – develops markedly during the preschool years, in parallel with maturation of prefrontal cortex
ERP ANALYSES An examination of the scalp topo-maps of the grand-averaged data revealed that the N2 component was right-lateralized on no-go trials, consistent with previous studies with children and adults (e.g., Bokura et al, 2001; Todd et al, 2008), and that N2 amplitudes were larger for go trials than for no-go trials over the left frontal part of the scalp
Recent research suggests that Asian preschoolers may perform better than age-matched North American or British children on measures of EF (e.g., Sabbagh et al, 2006; Oh and Lewis, 2008), consistent with reported cultural differences in the emphasis placed on impulse control (e.g., Chen et al, 1998)
Summary
Executive function (EF) – the conscious control of thought and action – develops markedly during the preschool years, in parallel with maturation of prefrontal cortex (see Zelazo et al, 2008 for review). There is currently considerable interest in the specific neural correlates of EF (e.g., Bunge and Crone, 2009), but as with behavioral research on this topic, most of this work has been conducted with Western samples, and to date, there have been no published cross-cultural comparisons of these neural correlates It seems plausible, that genetic and/or environmental influences associated with culture may be reflected in children’s behavior, and in their neural function. Recent research on neural plasticity, for example, supports the suggestion that neural development is experience dependent (e.g., Neville, 1993; Huttenlocher, 2002), and interventions designed to promote EF have been found to produce changes in neural function related to EF (Olesen et al, 2004; Rueda et al, 2005)
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